


Palisades

by troutlaw



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Human Cole (Dragon Age), Mutual Pining, Non-Canon Relationship, Redemption, Slow Burn, The Iron Dad, unlikely friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-01-06 07:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18383507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutlaw/pseuds/troutlaw
Summary: Coriander Lavellan, bleeding-heart and hopeful leader of the Inquisition, is faced with a difficult choice when she finds herself looking after a Tevinter anarchist only recently wrested from the grip of Corypheus' control. Left with a decision lacking a correct answer, she frees Calpernia after the events of Mythal and hopes for the best.





	1. prologue

By the time the Inquisitor speaks up the silence has long since spoiled, turned sallow as she begins.

“Have Calpernia walked to one of the spare rooms on the battlements and — “ Coriander’s fingertips tremble, ghosting them across her knuckles to calm her nerves, “and don’t lock the door. We can post guards outside the door if it makes you all feel better -“

Cassandra is the first to interrupt, sparing her Leliana’s silent disapproval, the roundabout diplomatic rejection Josephine has prepared, the dumb fumbling commands from Cullen in an attempt to speak words to his fear.

“Inquisitor, you must understand how this sounds. Calpernia is a powerful mage who was knowingly complacent in Corypheus’ plot to end the world and only defected when she learned that her own life was at stake. I don’t know if... I do not know if that is the right thing to do.”

Her brittle hands wring knots in one another, desperate to hold something. The burns still ache through the bandages, chapped and smarting.

“I understand. She came this close and I don’t know that she would’ve stopped if we hadn’t told her about...” her voice is reedlike and thin with grief, a sharp boll in her throat, “but she’s so smart and so sad. You should’ve seen her face — you should’ve seen her face when I told her. It was like nothing I ever saw before. And she dove off the cliff like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.”

Coriander sways a little, places a hand on the broad oak of the war table. From the courtyard windchimes stir, golden-noted and clear, a breeze passing from one window to the other.

“I was never meant to do any of this but she - she let me. She knew what failure might mean and she still let me win - Cassandra, she cares so much. There is so much in her heart that I don’t know, that none of us know. If we don’t treat her like one of our own, we’ll never know and all we’ll have is the anger of another kept-down mage to reckon with, and a powerful one at that.”

Her voice is steady now, brow wrinkled in quiet determination.

“She’ll burn us to ash without a second thought if we cage her, after what he did. We have to let her choose, let her try.”


	2. the brightest presence in the room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calpernia gets a visit. Coriander chooses her words carefully.

A soft knock at the door.

Calpernia feels the old rush of rage stir inside her, like hot fingers sifting through the graverobbed cremains of her soul. Her fist trembles and she can smell burning as the quill in her hand scalds in her grip, ink pooling on the paper. She hopes whomever knocked leaves after a moment, holding her breath in the chill quiet of her room.

Another soft rapping follows, and Calpernia notices the hard, hollow quality to the knocking. When the door sighs open a booted foot pokes though and she understands - the tapping had been the side of whoever this was’ shoe.

Her eyes follow up the leg and catch the gauzy cotton-covered, vaguely defined shapes of her hands, fingertips barely brushing what they touch, doorknob and door frame respectively. There are gentle sloping lines that trail from the slim bandaged shapes of her wrists up her arms, disappearing under her shirt and reappearing at her neck. Vallaslin, she reminds herself, unimaginably delicate and silk fine on fawn-colored skin. Where she catches herself is where the lines meet the rosy bottom lip of her visitor - and for the first time, Calpernia gets a good solid look at the sweet, sorrowful face of the Inquisitor, unbetrayed by rage or battle-tiredness.

Her face is a round smooth stone, cheeks meeting the harplike slope of her jaw without fault atop the soft curves of her neck. Calpernia meets her eyes and has to clench her fist hard, has to dig ash-blackened fingernails into the rough calloused flats of her palms to not stare long into the inquisitor’s forest-deep eyes, dark brown and liquid gold, so warm and so incredibly sad.

“Hello, Inquisitor,” she starts, before the elf can get a word in. As she speaks her mouth makes a thin, hard line on freckled skin. “There was a nest of wasps in the corner of my room, I dispatched them already. I hope that was alright with you.”

“Of course - ”

“Since you seem to be so keen on keeping things that you know will do you harm,” interrupts Calpernia, intent on washing her hands of the wan look of the girl across the room from her. “Perhaps I should have let them fly away and thrown myself out the window with them.”

The snideness only serves to deepen the sadness in her eyes, and Calpernia watches as her fingertips curl into her hand, tucked into a fold of gauze. The wounded look she gives makes her feel bad, despite her best efforts to push her away.

“Can I sit here?” the elf says after a moment, a half drawn breath like a creaking branch, bandaged hand pointing to the storage chest at the foot of the bed that had been afforded to her in her meager living space.

Sunlight falls through a still-unthatched corner of wall, blue sky like a thumbprint in the corner of calpernia’s vision. The light falls on the back of a pictureframe with its face turned to the wall, the material papering the back side ripped in several places and scalloped at the edges, bearing tiny tooth-and-claw marks. Calpernia refuses to acknowledge her further, instead scrutinizing the faded parchment of the frame.

”You really did a number on the wasps, huh?” the Inquisitor gives a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

She barely takes up any space on the chest, but still seems like the brightest presence in the room, somehow directing Calpernia’s attention back to her with a sereness she had never known before.

”Nothing left but scorch marks, really.”

A beat of silence.

”Kinda... kinda did the same thing to my hands.”

Calpernia’s mouth grows dry at the mention of what she had done, a thin weed of shame pushing through her stomach. At the temple of Mythal, the elf had nearly been in tears behind her as Calpernia, nearly defeated, dragged her broken body to a ledge, having been goaded into a fight by those alongside her at the time. She didn’t remember if she had been crying too, only the awful gasp Coriander gave when she plunged downwards, the lines of her grief warping her features as she dropped like a kingfisher after her, arms outstretched. Even through the sadness she was golden and incredible, quivering with a sunrise energy that seemed too great for her shape that stayed with her always. She can remember the Inquisitor’s cool, smooth hands on her wrists. She can remember the sound she made as Calpernia’s hands lit up with magefire, brilliant as the sun and hotter still. The magic bit deep into the softest parts of her palm, but still the elf had held her there looking eye to eye, even as her skin began to scorch. Even as all the wind was knocked out of her as the mage that was by her side catches them within seconds of hitting the ground, suspended by tenuous blue-green bonds.

Calpernia can remember how sorry she looked as she peeled one hand back, angry red against the sorrel brown of her skin and sticky with lymph. The elf had kept one hand on her, one marred, blistered hand feathered around her wrist till they had reached solid ground. Her jackboots come trampling in shortly after and the still-young Inquisitor had made no sound, allowing those by her side to fuss over her and gingerly wrap her splitting hands in cotton. She stares meekly, cheeks wet with tears no longer flowing.

Calpernia can remember how she felt the Inquisitor’s eyes on her till she left the chamber, watching her as her soldiers hustled her away.

”It’s alright though,” the elf’s voice calls her back from her thoughts, guiding, gentling, “the surgeon thinks it’ll heal in a month or two. Three weeks if i’m careful.”

“Would you like an apology?” Calpernia’s voice is flat with disinterest, though she fears she isn’t quite as good at hiding her feelings as she hoped, “Is that what you came here for? To seek reconciliation for an injury that you essentially caused?”

The elf stays quiet for a moment, eyes falling to her hands.

“Not really. I just wanted to say hello,” she smiles the same smile again, eyes joyless, “my name’s Coriander. I don’t think we ever properly met.”

“Do you greet all your prisoners like this?”

“No, but not all of them are Tevinter revolutionaries who’ve been lied to and screwed over by a supposed god, you know?” at this the edge in her voice comes out, razor fine, like the call of a bird at daybreak. At this, Calpernia’s interest is piqued.

“Good thing I was screwed over then,” says Calpernia, a dagger-sharp resentment in her voice. Coriander lets out a huff through her nose which causes a bark of bitter laughter to escape the mage. The frustration makes her seem all the more human and therefore all the more fallible, the sparing of her life less heroic and more stumbling and uninformed.

“What’s your name?”

“You already know my name,” her voice is unscrupulous and sour.

“Not on your terms, I don’t. I don’t want everything I know about you to have come from spying in on a single conversation,” at this Calpernia stops and can hear the tip of her quill snap, emptying the remaining ink onto the parchment she had been writing on. Her brow furrows and she can feel the ridges on her nose stand up as she scowls but Coriander meets her blow for blow, looking right back at her with mirror-fine hardness.

“My name is Calpernia, and you knew that. If all is said and done, _Coriander_ ,” the name drops from her mouth like a dying bird, landing heavy in her ears. “I don’t see why you need to continue to pester me.”

The elf sets her jaw and stands up from the storage chest, arms bent slightly at the elbows.

“Alright.”

And she leaves, gently closing the door behind her and again Calpernia is alone. She looks to where she had sat atop the chest, still empty, as Calpernia had no more than the cloth on her back to her name, and to where the picture frame lay tilted against the wall, and to the papery layers of the burnt-out wasp nest, and the window and the hole in the ceiling beyond it, and the endless blue beyond that. Made uneasy by the sudden silence, she sets to moving, capping the ink on the desk and gathering the ruined paper and quill into one. She makes sure to fold the parchment in two, the navy ink blotting the paper and obscuring whatever writing had been there before, and along with the husk of what remained of the nest, pitches all three out the window. The sad shape of the broken quill and the parchment flutter uselessly in the breeze, the wasp nest dissipating into shreds.

None of this belongs to her.

Quickly she shakes herself free of this emptiness and reaches to pick up the frame, finding the tack in the stone where it had hung before. In the frame sits a forgotten-about mirror, scuffed in places and grimy around the edges, a hairline fracture etching a splinter like a spine through the corner. Even in its neglect it was easily the nicest thing in her room and she can't help but stare a moment longer, shifting onto her toes to see the whole of her face.

In the quiet of the room she stands before it, examining her reflection in the dull glass.

The sunlight comes through the leaves sweet and honeycolored and the shadows of her face feel softer, the roundness of the day making the hardscrabble black-green bruises from the battle almost rosy, the blood a bloom upon her brow instead of what it was - an ugly mark that stung if she thought about it too long. In the midafternoon hush the warping soon-to-be scar carving rust-red across her nose seems an accidental glancing blow, a goodnatured mistake, rather than a horizon wide path drudged by an arrow loosed a moment too late, a gouge made shallow only by a chance twist of her body. She considers herself a dour woman, not one for vanity or self-scrutiny, but still takes a breath and undoes her hair. In the days after Mythal she had been afforded a bucket and a rag, able to wipe away the blood and grime that had managed to work itself into every scrap of her skin, allowed to scrub away what little battle-sweat she could under the black roving eye of the jailor. She hadn't been given a hairbrush, instead left to pull the foxtails and spiders and bits of rock snarled in the delicate wove of her hair out by hand. The unwinding is practiced and goes quickly, wheatstraw yellow whip-thin plaits laid limp against the broad of her back. What is unfamiliar is what comes next, hands clumsy and fumbling as she unbraids her hair, unsureness and eagerness both at play in her stomach.

Her fingers curl and uncurl as the braids come undone, and by the time she’s finished, they creak stiff at the knuckles. Her long hair catches on her hands as she runs them through, locks waist-length and lion-colored.

Calpernia finds herself smiling and laughs silently, amused by her own frivolity. Undoing her hair was a nice sentiment, like something she'd read in a book, but as soon as she's finished, out of habit she sets to spooling it back up. To her surprise her scalp smarts as she gathers a handful of her hair, the old hurts aching a layer deeper than she expected.

Maybe she'd leave it loose for once. The thick golden waves frame the angles of her face as she undoes her shoes for the first time since she’s arrived in Skyhold, kicking them into an untidy pile along with her cuirass at the foot of her bed. All at once the whole of her shape whines for rest, tiredness sticking like burrs to each limb, eyes heavy, a poppy-thick drowse leaning into her with all its weight. She half glances at the door, wrapping her arms around the worn-in under-fed shape of her chest, soft linen clinging to her sides.

The door was unlocked. She could leave.

She was _dreadfully_ tired.

The fine dust of the stone floor sticks to the worn out soles of her feet as she scrapes across the room, yawning widely as she rests her hand on the doorknob. Something in her heartbeat like a drum, a frantic caged animal ten steps from freedom, insists she run, run, run, eyes lolled white in sockets, overwhelmed at the thought of escape. Another something can still smell the sweet forest-green clover scent of the Inquisitor, earthy and safe and still lingering in the doorframe, the space between their worlds. Another entirely is childishly giddy with the prospect of her own room, a lock of her own, a door to shut not because she is kept out or locked in but because it is _hers_. The solid click satisfies her as she turns the bolt, hearing the heavy roll of the linchpins against the strikeplate, the sureness of the mechanism within - once she swallows her pride, she thinks, she might thank the Inquisitor for not locking her in. If that ever happened.

When she settles into the bed it is not a choice but instead the inevitable result of a long, sleepless string of days, the rattling conclusion of a storm snuffed out beneath the thumb of her exhaustion. The broadcloth sheets are more comforting than any stolen silk, any thick-furred or eiderdown blanket, and she stretches out long beneath them, tension unspooling from her shoulders as she sinks in deep.

As soon as her head hits the pillow, she’s out.


	3. nonthreatening and remarkably quaint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> calpernia gives someone pause. coriander uses her words.

Coriander is nose deep in a book about Tevinter history in the rotunda, Dorian prattling on about subtleties between editions and which author wrote the most objectively, when Calpernia comes to visit. It is the older mage that alerts her to her presence, the sudden sound of air drawn through his teeth. He lays painted fingertips on her shoulder as he speaks in a low whisper, voice insistent and intrigued.

“This is the mage who was to be the vessel, correct? Why is she out and walking around?”

“Hello, Lord Pavus.”

 _“Oh, wonderful, she already knows me._ Hello, I don’t believe we properly met,” Dorian’s voice crescendoes as he greets Calpernia, smiling just barely too wide to be friendly. A hennaed hand hangs mid air in offering.

“Ha, yes,” Calpernia’s tone is flat, her chin thrust out as she looks down the bridge of her nose at his hand, “if it interests you, your father and my former master have much in common.”

“Oh! Do tell, I’d love to see the look on his face when he hears that.”

“They both like their slaves educated,” Calpernia’s tone has the seriousness of a knife.

Coriander can see the velvet fine wrinkle appear in Dorian’s brow and the deep marble-carved furrow upon Calpernia’s and has half a mind to laugh - even in the face of everything, Tevinters still managed to make a game of posturing. Dorian sputters and Calpernia’s mouth curls into a wry grin, and Coriander takes her cue to hand off the book. She elects to visit with him later, when an immensely powerful would-be iconoclast was no longer commanding her attention.

“How’d you know Dorian?” Coriander asks cheerfully when they’ve exited the rotunda. The sky is an unstirred gray, made dim by rain and sunset both.

“When I asked a serving girl if she’d seen you, she told me you were in the library with a Lord Pavus,” she grimaces slightly, “Erasthenes met Pavus Senior at one point or another and brought me along. Halward had brought his favorite slave along as well. I hesitate to say I was _glad_ it was not him who greeted me, but it was a relief at the very least. Heavens if they don’t look alike, though.”

Coriander laughs aloud at this, laughs like water running over river rocks, like wind through still-growing trees. Calpernia has to keep her mouth from twitching into a smile, holding in a giddy breath sparked at the sound of the other’s laughter.

“Don’t tell him that, he’ll positively turn inside out.”

Coriander sighs and Calpernia clears her throat, setting her brow. Her voice grows distant again, detached, inflectionless and vague.

“I received the note and the meal you left in my chambers,” if there was resentment in her voice, Coriander is unable to pick it up between the stirring of the wind and the even clicking of Calpernia’s boots against the battlements, “what I am not sure of is how it arrived there, considering the door was locked when I fell asleep and locked when I woke up.”

“Oh,” Coriander laughs again, sheepishly now, a disarming smile playing at the corner of her mouth, “I’m a rogue. Breaking and entering is kind of what I do. The locks on the battlements are pretty simple, as far as things go...”

She realizes that was the wrong thing to say by the way Calpernia silently constricts, the hollow of her throat prominent against her skin, the fine tendons in her hands growing taut beneath the surface.

“Your hair is pretty when it’s down, by the way. You should wear it like that more often.”

“You broke into my room, Inquisitor. I was asleep. I would refrain from talking to me about what you saw.”

Silence sits like a bloated creature between them for what feels like hours, Coriander unable to meet the other’s eyes. When she speaks, her voice is uncomfortably loud, tinny in the still air.

“Did — uh, did you get anything to eat, though? I wasn’t sure what you wanted so I tried to grab —-“

“Tried to grab a little bit of everything? I read your note, elf. You need not repeat yourself.”

When Calpernia hadn’t appeared at the dinner bell, not in the kitchen, the mess hall, or the tavern, Coriander endeavored to bring her a tray of food, something nonthreatening - a bread roll, some greens, a helping of salted meat and a bundle of sweet grapes alongside a morsel of cheese she’d pinched from the larder. When Calpernia failed to answer her knocking and the door failed to open, Coriander made short work of the lock with a rivet and a splitpin, stepping lightly as she set the platter on the table beside her bed. She left a note apologizing if she found nothing she liked, for good measure gave her directions to the tavern and the farmyard, and locked the door behind her.

“...well, did you find anything..?”

“Yes, I did,” Calpernia sighs loudly, cutting eyes at her, “though I found the part about giving it to the pigs remarkably quaint. I sincerely hope that not all of your prisoners receive directions to the slop troughs.”

“Calpernia, you aren’t my prisoner anymore,” her voice is chill, authoritative, taking them both aback at its sudden clarity, the challenging bell of an eagle —- just as quickly as she finds her mark her tone again becomes conversational, cringing, “I figured... I don’t know, I figured you knew. You can leave if you want. I figured you’d know, ‘cause of the unlocked doors.”

“I was aware,” she flushes bright red, unwilling to be caught offguard, “I would be a fool to think there wasn’t some catch, though. Corypheus has shown me there always is, hasn’t he?”

The two remain silent for a long time, standing still on the battlements, the wind at their back - a cold wind that smells like rain, stirring wind chimes and flapping sheets and bedclothes strung in now-untidy white lines, crisscrossing the hold below. Even in her silence, Calpernia’s gaze is fox bright, a simmering interest alighting behind her eyes. Coriander rests her arms on a stone pilon, her chin on her forearm where the bandages stop.

When Coriander looks up at her, her eyes dart away, focused on some far off face.

“Do you know why you aren’t my prisoner, though?” she traces shapes in the rock with the uncovered tips of her fingers, thumbing at a divet between two stones.

“I do not believe you’d actually like me to answer that, Inquisitor.”

Coriander meets her gaze again, eyes slightly narrowed, a stern resoluteness to counter her grasping provocation.

“You’re not my prisoner because I can’t conscript you, since I’m not planning on dumping another lifetime of slavery on you; I can’t keep you locked up because you’ll find a way to kill me where it hurts the entire time you kill me; and I can’t kill you because — because what kind of ending would that be? Do you get what I mean?” her expression is underlined with defeat, desperate for any sign of sympathy from the mage.

From Calpernia comes that single cackle of rage, a sharp laugh of disbelief and irreverence.

“So this is a story to you, and you would spare my life simply because my death would not provide a satisfying conclusion?” her tone is high and vicious as a snapping jaw, a bitten hand.

“I spared your life because i didn’t think Corypheus should’ve had the satisfaction of snuffing out another light just to show he can, because what the fuck else can I do, Calpernia?” Coriander faces her fully now, bandaged hand balled into a tight fist, trembling imperceptibly. Calpernia’s face warps into an incredulous snarl, gaze hard as stone, hot-cold with a slow, strange mixture of familiarity and rage. She tries to turn a shoulder to the elf, to block her out, but without fail her whippoorwill-sweet voice finds its way in, a saw-whet hooting in her head to aching.

“And maybe it is a story, you know? And I didn’t want this to be another story where i have to crush everything in my path to get what I want,” Coriander’s voice strains, a knot in her throat, “Especially not you, especially not when all he sees is a means to an end instead of what you really are.”

She looks now to the setting sun through the clouds, a mottled white-gray as she swallows hard, blinking back tears. Insects collide wildly in the air. The watery throat-buzz of a crow creaks across the courtyard. Calpernia strangles her urge to feel bad.

“Or if it sounds better, then... Enemy of my enemy, how about?” Coriander can feel the other’s eyes on her as her face grows hot, “I wish it were me trying to use you, use what you know to get back at him, just to make it easier when you hate me for it, but it isn’t. All it is is the fact that you probably know better than me and know how to make things count, so I’m giving you that opportunity. No catch.”

The elf wipes the corner of her eye on her arm, letting out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Sorry, I’m a crier.”

Calpernia sniffs indifferently, wrapping her arms around herself as the wind picks up again.

“Uh... The rain’s about to start,” Coriander clears her throat, straightening up and steeling her resolve to the best of her ability, “Think it’s gonna be a big one. The tavern’s that way and you know where the rotunda is, and the mess hall is just in the main part of the castle proper, so...”

Coriander trails off and watches as, without another word, Calpernia turns on her heels, walking briskly against the wind. In her head Coriander is kicking herself, imagining what she could’ve, what she should’ve said, and Calpernia’s mind is racing, trying to put odds and ends together of what happens next, a whale-eyed terror taking root at the prospect of freedom she still expected to be snatched away at the last moment. Coriander wishes she said more. Calpernia wishes she hadn't spoken at all.

When the rain comes they think of eachother, unable to ignore, ever-present in the forefront of their minds.


	4. a stalwart in spite of itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> calpernia makes some new friends. coriander stays out of the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains brief reference to past sexual assault.

The rain falls heavy and absolute, evenly drumming on the roof of the inn and obscuring the sounds of the conversations within as Calpernia sits alone at a table, as close as she could get to the fire while still well away from any patron that might try to talk to her. Not that anyone knew her from anybody else - barmaids hadn’t been at the Temple of Mythal and she didn’t exactly expect to find Venatori among the ranks of the faithful. No one recognized her. Even with the warmth of the hearth she sits wet and cold and silent, having caught just enough rain to make her miserable. All she can do is stare at her hands, without gold to buy a meal and without friends to speak to. She silently scolds herself for moping.

As the minutes crawl by, she looks about the tavern without turning her head, desperate to avoid drawing any attention to herself. She catches a glimpse from the serving girl she talked to before, who flashes her a smile of recognition before returning to her duties. Her head reels at this - for months she had carried herself as though her feet were matches striking, as though she was a lantern knocked on its side to start an inferno, and here she was smiling back at a serving girl because she’d seen her before and wanted to acknowledge her, here she was feeling bitter over little more than a missed meal. The quaintness dogs her as she forces herself to look around, if only to distract from the kettle-drum rhythm of her heart, the blood in her ears.

She meets the eyes of a man across the bar for only a second before looking away. The fine features of his face make up something un-Ferelden but she can’t place what, evenly tan skin pulled smartly over noble cheekbones. From the periphery of her vision she sees him get up, set the bottle he’d been nursing by his chair, and cross the floor to sit by a gray mountain of a man - Qunari, she tells herself - aside the tough figure of an elf who hadn’t stopped talking since she sat down. The elf is more rounded out and stocky than the slight willow-fine inquisitor, and as she exchanges rude jokes and dirty stories with the two men, Calpernia realizes why. Her accent betrays her heritage - the grating plosives and lax vowels speak volumes of her background, city elf in origin. She knew the Qunari have no quarrel with the elves and converted them regardless but nonetheless found it difficult to believe a conscript of the Qun would speak so _colorfully_.

Calpernia has practically calculated the width between the points of the Qunari’s horns when all three turn to look at her, five eyes on her where none had been before. She flounders and whips her head to the side, paying mock attention to the notices posted on the beam beside her. She can hear high gibbering laughter from the elf and wrings her arm in frustration, angry sparks springing from beneath her fingernails in agitation. The smell of burnt hair reaches her just as the voice of the Qunari does.

“Hey Vint, did you want something to drink or were you just planning on staring at everybody all night?”

His tone is easy-going and good-natured, though the nickname still sets Calpernia on edge as she looks back at the trio. She makes a face halfway between a smile and a frown, tight lipped as she shakes her head.

“Awe, come on. Don’t be a stranger, scary!” calls the elf, an nonchalant grin failing to hide her interest.

“Some of us don’t have the funds to buy a drink simply to please those around us,” she responds, a quiet tension underlining her words.

“...What?”

Already frustrated, Calpernia stands up and walks swiftly over to their table, shoulders hiked, fist clenched.

“You were at Mythal, Qunari, were you not? You ask questions you know the answer to. You should know that I was plucked from the fray and dropped here without my possessions, let alone extra money to waste on a drink because it would comfort others to see it so.”

“Is that all, then?” the man beside him responds easily, almost as quickly as she finishes speaking, “if it’s just money, we’ll cover you. Have a seat, pull up a chair.”

“I’m afraid I must decline,” Calpernia feels an angry embarrassment prickling her cheeks as she tries to turn away.

“Oh, come on,” chimes the elf, thumping the table lightly with a loose fist, “you’re already over here, might as well sit, right? Won’t kill you to take a break from brooding for a bit.”

Calpernia is about to turn around when the sound of squeaking chair legs interrupts her, the Qunari hooking a boot around the rungs and kicking it towards her. He watches her over the rim of his tankard, taking a long, slow drink, deliberate as he swallows. Though his skin is silvery and warped by scars, Calpernia can see the cautious furrow of his brow, eye darkening, silently answering for her and giving her no room to run away. Calpernia hesitates for a moment and sees one mottled eyebrow arc upwards. The unspoken challenge in this alone is enough to change her mind. As she sits, his entire face relaxes, a playful veneer over the ever-watchful eye still trained on her, unyielding steel beneath his smile. His hand plays a rhythm against the worn wood of the table and all at once the attention is turned to Calpernia, and she can feel their eyes picking over her like worms on a spoiled fruit.

“So,” the elf begins, teetering her chair from one set of legs to the other, “you’ve got a name.”

“...Yes.”

“Well, get after it then,” her tone is impatient, “I’m Sera, that’s Bull, that’s Krem, and who’s you? I mean, what’s your name? Pointy seems pretty convinced about you but it’s hard to stay convinced when I don’t know you from manners.”

“Calpernia,” she pauses, lips pursed, “Pointy?”

“Coriander. The Inquisitor. Cause ears, and daggers, I guess. Also skinny. Elbows and shite.” Sera shrugs, “It’s whatever. So, Callie, yeah? Good name. Swear I’d read it in a book somewhere.”

“Did you want anything, Calpernia? Don't know if it matters to you but I doubt they've got anything quite like what they serve back home." 

Tevinter. _That's_ where he was from. She feels silly for not noticing it sooner. Part of her feels a strange insect-bright nervousness at yet another individual from Tevinter, but before she can spiral, Krem speaks up again.

“Hope you don’t mind. Have you met the other Tevinter, Dorian? Pretty fellow, usually around the rookery."

“Yes, I have. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t... Pardon me, I don’t have any notions of what I ought to order - I was advised not to drink on the job.”

“‘Course you were - what about after work, at the end of the day?” Sera shifts in her chair, leaning an elbow on the table.

”A slave’s work is all day. Drinking at any time would’ve been a poor choice.”

She narrowly catches herself before explaining why. The memory that comes with lights up the pan of her skull like fire, her heartbeat becoming an uneasy staccato like the hapless beating of wings against a window pane, an agitation of air, a hardscrabble rattle-bang in the cave of her chest. The memory feels like drowning, a fat tongue grown numb in a mouth sour with brandy, the features of her own face fuzzy in the haze. Two pairs of hands pick her up and put her down, pull her to pieces, undress her and lay her bones bare. A mouth on her neck.

Her fingernails cut dents into her knuckles, savaging a breath in her chest as if to kill it and rid herself of the dread sunk deep in her thoughts.

“Don’t go getting dark on us now, Vint,” comes the first thing the Bull has said to her since she sat down. His voice isn’t comforting but still shoulders its way against the whirling in her head, commanding her attention, a stalwart in spite of itself.

“It’s alright. Pavus does enough complaining for the both of us,” Krem smiles easily, “no one’ll lose sleep over a Tevinter who doesn’t care for his homeland. Especially not him.”

The Bull lets out a half-laugh as Krem nods and winks towards him, sighing as he shifts in his chair, the wood creaking mightily beneath him.

“Can you blame me? Stuff gets weird when a bunch of Vints are in one place. You saw what happened with the Venatori,” he steals a glance back to Calpernia, testing the waters, “I’d say no offense but I’d hope you wouldn’t take offense for a group you aren’t a part of anymore.”

Calpernia’s mouth is set in a thin line.

“Not after what boss did for you,” he takes another drink from his tankard, looking down at it thoughtfully, “I’ve seen the kid set people swinging for less. To nearly break her own neck to try and save you - which, by the way..." 

He turns to her fully now, shape massive in Calpernia's field of vision. She refuses to look away.

"Never do that shit again. _Ever_.”

His voice rumbles into the lower octaves, dredged from stone, brow carved deep with furrows. He points with a fist the size of her skull, rigid as boat-knots, and she can see the shapes of great muscles coiling flush along the underside of his skin, hardening to white-knuckle stillness.

“I’m serious. You would've let her kill herself because you want to take the easy way out,” his gaze doesn’t waver from Calpernia’s as she holds her breath, “It took hours for her to realize what could’ve happened - that’s how shell-shocked she was. She’s pretty quick on the uptake but it wasn’t till later that she started freaking out. I've seen her cry in front of her troops exactly _twice_ \- once after you nearly dropped a damn Archdemon on her head and once after she had to save your sorry ass. That's two strikes, Vint. Don't make her take risks like that again.”

Bull leans back, and the tension diffuses. Again his face goes from a shale-colored shadow to the levelheaded easygoing smile it had been before. Calpernia still doesn't look away, face cold and unmoving, lets out a breath that unspools very little of the mounting pressure at the top of her spine.

“Saving someone to just turn around and let them go is pretty surprising too, even for her. Either she knows something that I don’t or you’re doing something _real_ next-level to get off scott free like this. Doubt it's the first one,” Bull shrugs absently, stretching out in his chair, “So that means you’ve got something special. Maybe. You don’t exactly seem the type to reveal your hand to just anybody - especially not to any of us.”

“It’s blood magic, isn’t it?” Sera interrupts - a low thrum of fear allays her artificial disinterest, the offhanded question framed by a note of seriousness.

“No.”

“Good, then. Too much backwards with the world to have another someone throwing blood at all their problems. Got enough of that with Coryphebitch and what not.”

Calpernia has to swallow a laugh, placing a hand over her mouth. Her eyes glitter with dandelion-bright excitement suddenly spurred by the easy exchange of words, the off-the-tongue insult that Corypheus would've found unacceptable.

“So she _can_ smile!” Krem says cheekily, and Calpernia tries to glare at him. Her cheeks dimple as she suppresses a smile.

“It wasn’t that good,” Sera pipes as Calpernia continues to try and hide her amusement, “bet you can think of a better one for the big tit.”

“I watched him explode a soldier for failing to say _My Lord_ when they greeted him,” the mage’s face is pink as she speaks, laughter jumping through the undertones of her voice, “It would not be wise for me to--.”

The elf blows a raspberry and returns to teetering her chair back and forth as the conversation stills, the table quiet once again, save for Calpernia giggling mutely into the tankard set before her as she brings it to her lips. Attention is drawn elsewhere. Bull returns to drumming his fingers against the table top.

It is Calpernia who speaks up, finally, in a tiny voice that barely reaches the others' ears.

“...Corypheshit.”

Even the Qunari laughs.


	5. a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> coriander does some training. calpernia meets someone new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains really brief mentions of canon-typical violence.

“...So.”

It was never a good sign when the Iron Bull struck up a conversation in the middle of a training drill.

“I had a question, boss.”

Coriander ducks under the great swing of his arm, narrowly dodging the dulled greatsword cleaving the air above her in two, seconds away from catching her in the side. She hated it when Bull tried to talk to her during a spar - exertion plays to his benefit, exhaustion making modesty impossible to maintain and wrenching truth from any attempted dissembling easier than ever. Tiredness revealed what calculated interrogation could not.

“The Tevinter you brought in - Calpernia, right?” Bull pivots as Coriander disappears from his sight. “Hey, I’m trying to talk to you.”

“And I’m trying to train,” she huffs, reappearing as the blunted tip of the practice dagger comes in contact with his skin. When Bull doesn’t move, the metal twitches deeper, poking at a sore spot.

“Fine,” he sighs, squaring his shoulders as the elf disappears again. Despite her best efforts, her distraction betrays the illusion and Bull can see her flightpath’s footprints, scraggly grass crunching beneath her feet as she makes a lazy circle around him, “I was just wondering if you had a plan for her, past just siccing her on the world and letting her go destroy whatever gets in her way first. Even if that’s us.”

“Inquisition intel. Not your business. And that’s not what we’re doing, anyway,” calls the voice of the rogue. Bull swings to the left, grazing an invisible shoulder enough to set her off balance. He can hear scrambling as she rights herself, starting another circle around his side.

“I don’t buy that, sorry boss. You told her what you wanted, right? And she could tell anyone,” Bull traces her through the grass, “so it must not have been too top-secret or you wouldn’t’ve told her, or too outlandish, since she would’ve said something about it.”

“What, publically?” Coriander scoffs. She’s still too far away to strike.

“No. Shared a drink with her the other night.”

The rogue goes quiet for a moment and Bull can hear her footsteps slow and finally stop, balanced lightly on the balls of her feet, completely still. The outlines of her near transparent shape waver like quiet rippling lines of heat, cumuliform intensity.

“You hung out with her?” her voice is small and bewildered, soft with confusion.

“We were drinking in the same bar,” Bull doesn’t move, anticipating some feint or strike or surprise move from her stillness, “I mean... There’s only one tavern in skyhold. Not exactly out of the ordinary for two people to be in the same place.”

”...When?”

“On the night that it rained. Almost felt bad for her, alone but not even drinking alone, just sitting and scowling at herself.”

The attack never comes. Bull can hear the awkward scuff of foot, a quiet resigned sigh from the inquisitor. The muscles in his shoulders ache as they stiffen.

“Why do you ask?”

“‘Cause she hasn’t spoken to me in days,” her voice sounds even more dim and discarded now, “haven’t even crossed paths with her. Saw her this morning but that’s it - she didn’t even look at me.”

“She was kinda your prisoner, boss. Not exactly someone you wanna rub elbows with right away, you know? You gotta understand if she wanted to clear out.”

“But she obviously didn’t want to clear out, if she stuck around this long. She just doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“...It sounds to me like you want her to be your friend.”

Bull waits for a response but can only hear her feet pick up as she starts circling again and he braces for the eventual touch of cold metal against his ribs, unable to trace her steps as she becomes entirely silent. He whirls at the sound of a twig cracking.

“There’s nothing wrong with turning an enemy into a potential ally,” Coriander’s voice calls to him from a different direction entirely, suddenly brittle. Her voice bounces around him, a stone dropped in a well, cold and opaque and unable to be followed - he again whips around, attempting to face her, but there is no break in the air to reveal her, no hairline fracture of sight to indicate where she might be. He sets his brow and draws in a deep breath, preparing for when she hit.

“Except I didn’t say ally, did I boss?”

The elf makes no noise and Bull almost regrets pushing her, though he’d never show it - Coriander could get scary when she set her mind to it. He didn’t exactly want to know what needling her on something as personal as this could cause her to do.

He doesn’t have to wait long for her to strike. All at once Coriander is there, on his back, hard little heels dug into his spine and nails pressing neat maroon rows into the skin of his shoulder as she clings. Her blade is immediate and cold against his neck, darkened iron against the stony grey of his skin. The gauze bandages cause her hand to slide from the solid pack of muscle along his neck and she attempts to correct, metal pulling against his skin, and Bull is given just enough of an opening to fling himself forward and send her flying. The greatsword sets his ears ringing as it clatters to the ground. She’s all arms and elbows and corners as Bull grapples her off him, throwing an arm around her and pitching her small body forward. He bends at the waist, flipping her to the ground in one easy movement, and her arms flail against him as she falls.

“Fucking _ow_!” howls Coriander from the dirt, one hand clutching the back of her head and the other clutching a place on her back. She scrambles upright just as quickly as Bull downs her, panting slightly. Dust sticks to her sweat-slick dun-brown face and arms, cheeks red from exhaustion and embarrassment both, as Bull picks up the sword.

”Wouldn’t happen like that in a real battle anyway. I’d slit your neck and grab your chin as I jumped off, pulling your head back and opening it further and you’d be dead and wouldn’t be able to throw me like an asshole.”

“Or I’d see you at the beginning of the fight, know you’re a lurker planning some squirrely shit, and not take my eye off you, catch you in the middle of one of your loop-de-loops and have you down in seconds,” his tone is coolly matter-of-fact. Bull leans an arm against the pommel of his now downturned greatsword, a hand resting on his hip.

“Except you wouldn’t know that I was making circles. Once I disappeared you couldn’t track me.”

“Maybe. But patterns are pretty predictable. You’d bump into a party member that didn’t notice you before, reappear for a moment, and I’d be able to guess at your flightpath.”

“But what if I didn’t?”

“Then you’d flounder to dodge an attack meant for someone else, flicker out of stealth for two seconds, and then I’d get you.

“But you’d still be focused on them and _I’d_ get _you_ and you’re dead.”

“Fine. I rear back to hit your party member, you catch the edge of my blade on accident, I turn around and finish the job. You’re dead.”

Coriander explodes into a grating half-scream groan of frustration, throwing her blade to the ground with enough force to stick it upright in the dirt.

“I’m done training. My hands hurt,” comes her huffing reply, turning on her heels and storming away at full clip.

“Except they don’t,” he calls at her back, and the glare he recieves when she whips around to face him is gale-force, “The balm Stitches gave you? Numbing. There’s no way you can feel that shit. We can talk or we can keep training, but you can’t just run off to hope that the fire you refused to put out won’t spring up again as if it hasn’t already. Talk to her first if it makes you feel better, but you can’t afford to let her get your goat like this. You don’t have the time and neither does the rest of Thedas.”

Her response comes in a single finger as she stomps off, flickering from his view, out of his sight once again.

Somewhere entirely different, Calpernia sits alone in a room that is not her own, on a chair in which she will never fit, at a desk that will never be for her, a stowaway in her own bones, still waiting for someone to catch her in the act.

“Calpernia.”

Every hair on her neck stands up. The table top singes beneath her hand.

“That’s what you want people to call you, right? Calpernia?”

From the softly shadowed corner, obscured slightly by the stack of books she had pulled to avoid lingering too long in the rotunda (lest the young Lord Pavus again try to strike up a conversation with her) appears a face, unassuming as the moon, as eyelashes, lichen-white and candle-pale in the dim of the room. Calpernia does not speak.

“You’ve been called a lot of things lately,” the figure’s face is half hidden beneath rabbit colored hair, uncombed roving stirred by the slightest breath, “by a lot of different people. Some of them don’t know what else to call you. But I can call you Calpernia, if that’s what you want.”

“...Who are you - what do you need from me? Can I help you?” in her voice is a mounting confusion, made moreso by the gentle laughter that comes in reply.

“No, but I can help you,” the other’s voice is playfully self-satisfied, a tiny smile hidden beneath a fidgeting hand, “I’m Cole. My name is Cole. I... Help people. It’s what I do.”

The shadow steps fully into her view now and Calpernia meets the liquid-blue gaze of the stranger, the hushed features of his face framed by the same cornsilk colored curls atop his forehead, haloed by the well-loved worried brown of a hat just barely too big for the rest of him. His hands haven’t stopped moving since he appeared, curling and uncurling around the hem of his shirt as he speaks up again.

“You think a lot of things. Have a lot to think about, I mean, but have a lot on your mind too. Busier than a hive of bees — no, a hornet’s nest. A wasp’s,” his tone turns concerned, fingers wringing, “Do you really think all those things about yourself? About others?”

“...Think what?” Calpernia feels her fist clench beneath the table, distrust and curiosity both at play in her stomach.

 _“Inquisition types are too damned friendly. Don’t they know what a rabid animal looks like? Don’t they know what it sounds like, know what to do with one? I shouldn’t be here. They shouldn’t have me here. They shouldn’t leave me here —_ a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs _is what he had said but I know he meant a firestorm waiting to happen, waiting to prove everybody’s worst fears right, waiting to crunch the pliant bones of babies for blood magic just waiting on it — if I stumble, if I slip up, they’ll kill me, they’ll eat me alive and if I strike before they do imagine the wounded look in her eyes like in the chasm and this time she won’t be able to stop me, just able to look all doe-eyed with sadness, do something worse than just burn her hands - might just snarl at someone to remind them that the wolf is on their doorstep - how do they manage to care so much and yet not care at all? — a soft touch, a stolen meal, a gentle look that I don’t deserve — too many hands, too many eyes, mouths, teeth, tongues ;”_

“Stop,” Calpernia’s voice is sharp with broken-glass spite, “What did you do? Do you often do that? Do you often scrabble around in people’s heads until something looks interesting and pull it like a rat who’s found a loose string? Is that a regular occurrence?”

“Sorry, that was too much. What I meant was...” he pauses for a moment, thumbing at his fingernails, “You’re hurting. Yourself, mostly, but others too.”

Calpernia lets out a single laugh of disbelief.

”Good!”

“Not good. You hurt others to hurt yourself. When they lash out at you for lashing out at them, everything you don’t like about yourself is justified, so something makes sense. You think you deserve it because you don’t deserve them but they don’t deserve you. Pride and despair, a self-same shame in your stomach like a snake that eats itself.”

All the color leaves her face.

“I can’t tell you how to fix it, how to free the snake, but I can tell you that you need to talk to her.”

Calpernia’s knuckles turn white as her fist re-clenches. She hates that she knows who he’s talking about, a furl of flame in her belly, throat bobbing gently as she swallows.

“Hurting her won’t make it hurt less. You know better. You have to start somewhere.”

Without another word, Cole disappears, padfeet making no noise against the ancient floorboards, shadows just as dark as they were before. Calpernia’s palm smarts and as she uncurls her fist, tiny red crescents mark where each fingernail had dug into the skin. The indents refuse to disappear for a long time afterwards as she stares at the mottled, scabbing skin, trying to muster either courage or a scapegoat, a way out, an escape route from the mess she was in, as she had every day before and every day failed to take.

Before now, to do something on her own volition and to do something after being told were two entirely different things - even if she had planned on doing it anyway, to be instructed had been to rob her of what precious little ownership she felt she had over her own mind. Even now the spite she has for sleeping ache of servitude in her bones stops her from standing, deadens her will, turns any urge to reconnect or reconcile stale and useless. She almost wishes the stranger hadn’t told her to talk, set her to soothing - the fabric of her skirt crumples beneath her hand as her stomach winds knots inside her, indecision troubling her mind more now than ever.

Even still, she had to try.

The door nearly comes off it’s hinges as Calpernia slams it behind her.


	6. the right thing done the wrong way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> coriander hears something she needed. calpernia does too.

"Maker, Coriander, cut away from yourself. You'll slice your arm open at this rate."

"Thank you, father," Blackwall can hear her eyes roll, "doesn't matter anyway - don't have much of an arm to slice open and the anchor does a good enough job of that already."

"No need to be foul. Something on your mind, little stormcloud?"

"No."

"Alright then."

Coriander glowers in the almost silence of the barn, afternoon sun hot enough to catch fire to the wood chips at her feet, but humid air doggish enough to stop it. It sticks like a handprint on everything it touches, balmy on the heads of horses dipping mutely in the heat, their great shapes slick with sweat. Across the breezeway Blackwall has tied his hair into a messy sweat-tangled bun at the nape of his neck, and for a moment Coriander wants to get up and fix it -- the man couldn't fix his own hair if he tried -- but a bead of sweat sliding down her back advises her otherwise. It was too hot to breathe, let alone to be close with another person. A sheaf of bark flies from the branch she whittles at and the lichens curl back from the light and the pine tree smell of the wood hangs heavy in the air, sour on coriander's hands, a deep reeking wood rot yet to bloom. The overgrown patch of dallisgrass in the field outside wetly nods its many withering heads, gone rubbery and yellow-pale in the sun. What little coolness spared in the shade soon dissipates into the soles of Coriander’s feet as she plants them on the smooth cedar of the floorboards, leaning forward in the low stool she's perched on, bending away from the shifting light as the sun rolls higher in the day.

The quiet between them comes easy as breathing as they both work, Blackwall whistling indistinctly as he works oil into the wood before him. The smell is flat and tacky against the back of her throat but still reminds her of something sweet, of something different -- the rustling of just threshed grass, Aravel sails furling, Elven laughter in Elven language, the clean snick of the jackknife against a scrap of alderwood as she began her first carving, legs folded beneath her as her clan settles in for the night. Even though she had lost the project, a small cord-pull in the shape of a goat, the homey smell of the linseed oil remained with her even now. It's almost enough to finally pull her thoughts from the events of the day when Blackwall speaks up, casual, relaxed.

"What are you working on?"

"Not sure. Just getting the bark off for now. You?"

“Just a new tool rack for the chisels. I lost one a while back and couldn't convince anybody to sell me just one, so got a new set entirely. Need somewhere to put ‘em."

Another break in conversation. Coriander scratches idly at her bandages.

"Bull did that thing again," she says after a moment, knife twisting lopsided and haphazard around a knot in the branch when Blackwall's back is turned.

”Hm?”

“That thing where he asks a question he already knows the answer to, and asks it in a way so you give that answer anyway."

"Did he, now?" Blackwall's voice is familiar without reproach, an easy distance between the two. He shuffles his feet through the hay, clicks his tongue at Coriander as he turns around. She begrudgingly adjusts her hand.

"Yeah. Kept asking me about Calpernia like she's still my responsibility. Like I still have control over her or something. She's her own person though - she's just Calpernia. I don't even know what she's up to. She's been staying out of my way for the last week. Like she doesn't even care."

"Calpernia's the new Tevinter, right? Braids?"

"Mhm."

He goes back to his work, but Coriander can sense the tension in his body, the tiny hike of his shoulders when something was on his mind. She tries to ignore it and keeps carving, pretending to be distracted when he turns around to face her.

"So... Why did you decide to free her like that?" she can hear the stilting, stalling caution in his voice, see the lines of his face grow deeper with gentle, unobtrusive concern. An oil rag whines taut between two hands. "It seems you didn’t bury the hatchet, just acted like it was never there at all."

The elf sighs with her whole body. The branch she had been working with balances unevenly in her lap, jackknife clicking as she fiddles with the blade, head bobbed forward, shoulders sloped lower than before. A blunt pain runs the length of her forearm as she rests her chin in her palm, pinching dull at her elbow, and Blackwall taps at her wrist as he sits down across from her, rag still in hand. After Mythal the healer had tried to advise her to keep from using her hands as much as possible, and when she ignored that, too busy to care, settled instead for warning against acute pressure to either but especially the anchor-hand. Unfortunately for the healer _and_ herself, the anchor had marred her dominant hand, causing not a day to go by where she hadn't worsened the injury one way or another. After being ushered back to the infirmary by a pale-faced serving maid when the weals split open and bled up her sleeves one too many times, the healer enlisted the help of the accident-prone Inquisitor's friends to keep her careful. Blackwall ended up being the only one who still held her to that. Coriander puffs in annoyance as she lifts her chin, hand falling to her lap, scowling playfully through her gloom when blackwall chuckles at her frustration. Her face falls just as quickly as it lifts, though, hand tracing shapes in the wood grain, voice vague and paper-thin.

"Funny that you'd be the first to ask me that, huh, Rainier?" an attempted smile, "It's... It's hard to put into words. It doesn't make sense when I say it out loud. Not like it should, I suppose."

"Give it a try. I’m not exactly the one to tell you the right and wrong way to go about forgiveness, after all."

Another heavy hearted sigh.

"It's not that I don't think it was her fault," begins Coriander, "but... It isn't. It wasn't. Not all the way at least - I think she picked the wrong time to change things. To be a good person - and if not a good person, a different person. It's not her fault that the first one to actually listen ended up being corypheus, and I don't think she set out to ally with the worst person she could -- Tevinter's got plenty of bad, ask anybody. Ask Tevinter, even. She’s smarter than that. I don't think she deserved what happened to her... So I wanted to give her another chance to make it right."

She goes back to carving the branch. Bark curls off in strips.

"And... I don't know. I think she just picked the wrong tools. Like the wardens."

"Like the wardens?"

"Like using blood magic to mitigate the calling, I guess. Like helping the Venatori to try and prevent a blight. The right thing done the wrong way is still the right thing," she gives a single, empty laugh, "another funny thing to be telling you of all people."

The two stay quiet for a while. A cloud moves past the sun and the light turns clean and blue, air cooling, finally breathable.

"I don't know if it's actually like that, even. Maybe it's just some dumb decision that'll end up biting me in the ass and Cassandra will get to say I told you so."

"That part about the wrong time -" starts blackwall. She doesn't look up at him as she interrupts, voice closed off and dejected.

"I know, it sounds stupid."

"No, Coriander, that's you," sun-shot brown eyes meet graying blue, "Can’t you see? All that about right and wrong and getting mixed up, that not deserving what happened is about you. You're trying to give her the opportunity you never got."

"...I guess," her voice is terribly small. Her head rests in both hands now, eyes downcast, foot scuffing. Blackwall doesn't have it in him to correct her.

"You’re trying to give her the faith you've never had in yourself. You're... You give people a lot, you know."

"...Yeah."

She can’t meet Blackwall’s eyes.

”It’s not that big a deal. Maybe I just... care about people more than most. I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. I don’t want people to get hurt because of me.”

Her hands cover her face.

"Don't you... Don't you deserve the same? Don't you think you deserve that same kind of trust?" he asks.

Coriander is silent.

Blackwall clears his throat, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"It, uh... It must be a lot to think about. I hope it gets easier soon. I'm... I'm here for you, if it would help."

He has to force himself to relax as he reaches out to rest a calloused, bear-wide hand on the top of her head, unskilled at comfort but trying anyway, gingerly stroking the side of her head with his thumb. They stay like this for a while, Blackwall gently petting her as they sway unspeaking in the breeze, existing only in this brief moment of tenderness.

When Blackwall looks up, in the open doorway of the clearing trembles the cave-shouldered hollow-eyed barn-owl shape of Calpernia, hands strangling one another, face and knuckles haunted ghost-white and harrowed. He can see her shaking as she backs away. He says nothing. His hand pulls back from Coriander's head and by the time he looks up again, the mage is gone.


End file.
